30 May 2008

Labour to let Kedgley damage NZ trade policy

Sue Kedgley, hysterical hyperbolist, according to the Greens "is attending the High Level World Food Security Conference in Rome next week, as a member of the New Zealand delegation."

She is paying her own way, but by what measure does she have the right to be a member of the official delegation? Especially since she will be talking in a way that sabotages and undermines New Zealand's long standing (and bipartisan between Labour and National) call for the liberalisation of trade in agricultural commodities. New Zealand has argued for many years at the WTO that trade in food should be free from export subsidies (like manufactured products), free from trade distorting subsidies and free from non-tariff barriers to trade (that are not genuinely about biosecurity), with tariffs on food imports being capped and negotiated downwards.

Now Kedgley is going to mouth off nonsense like "We need to challenge the doctrine of free trade and accept that people's right to food, to be free from hunger, must have priority over an ideological fixation on allowing market forces to prevail at all costs."

For starters, there is no free trade in food, secondly why DO we need to challenge it? How do you guarantee this fictional "right to food", proposing a global social welfare scheme are you? How do you propose food production increase unless prices increase to encourage it? How about the boondoggle of subsidised biofuels, which Labour is continuing with, the Greens are supporting and which is contributing towards higher food costs worldwide? Diddling with the market doing wonders there isn't it? Thought of attacking the EU, USA and Japan for grossly distorting agricultural subsidies and protectionism which has stifled agricultural production in other countries?

No - you're a vapid idiot.

SO why the hell has Labour let this banal control freak loose on the world when she says "I expect there will be intense debate between the free trade marketeers and those who believe the free trade agenda is one of the causes of the present crises"

Yes New Zealand is the free trade promoter, and by no stretch of the imagination can anyone outside the manufactured propaganda laden hysteria of Kedgley can honestly assert free trade is to blame for higher food prices - because it simply doesn't exist in food.

Kedgley is a vapid control freak who has for years sought to ban what she hates, make us do what she likes, make us pay for what she thinks is good for us and tax what she doesn't like. She distorts, peddles hysterical unscientific nonsense again and again, and has been the snake oil merchant for opposing genetic engineering, and concern about "safe food".

This woman shouldn't be let near any conferences claiming to be speaking on behalf of New Zealand. At best her views are economic nonsense, and as shallow as the rhetoric in her press releases, at worst she will provide succuour to the agricultural protectionists in Brussels, Washington, Tokyo and Paris who want to continue undermining world trade in food, world food production and currently strip around 1-2% GDP growth p.a. from the NZ economy.

So why is Labour letting an anti-free trade nutcase argue against government trade policy at an international forum?

2 comments:

adamsmith1922 said...

Like you I think Kedgley should not be part of the FAO delegation, I covered her involvement as part of much longer post on the whole issue of food issues here:-

http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/878/

The directly applicable comment is around half way.

She of course has everything the wrong way round it is the lack of free trade and protectionist distrotion plus governmental incompetence, corruption and under investment plus NGO nonsense on GM & GE that has materially contributed to the problem

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